US Navy and Naval Aircraft: News

"Sikorsky Aircraft, a unit of Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N), was awarded a contract worth more than $354 million for 29 MH-60R helicopters, the Pentagon said on Monday.

The Defense Department's daily digest of major contract awards said the contract was "for funding for the Navy's fifth program year" for the helicopters and to "fund associated program and logistics support."

"Around 3 a.m., the Coast Guard received a distress call from the 45-foot fishing boat Danny Boy. The captain, an unidentified 46-year old man, was having chest pains and needed medical help. The Danny Boy was about 40 nautical miles southeast of Portland.

The Zumwalt, the Navy's brand new stealth destroyer, was performing sea drills near the scene and offered to help. The Zumwalt sent a small crew to the fishing boat and transferred the captain aboard the destroyer until the USCG was able to airlift him to the Portland Jetport. The fishing captain is now recovering at Maine Medical Center. The Zumwalt was built at Bath Iron Works and was just deployed to sea earlier this week."

"The littoral combat ship USS Milwaukee, the Navy's newest ship that was commissioned in Milwaukee in November, broke down at sea Friday and had to be towed more than 40 nautical miles to a base in Little Creek, Va., the Navy Times reported. The ship, constructed at the Marinette Marine Corp. shipyard in Marinette, suffered an engineering problem while in route from Halifax, Canada, to Mayport, Fla., and ultimately its home port of San Diego, according to a post on the Navy Times website. The cause of the problem on the ship -- which was towed to the Joint Expeditionary Base at Little Creek, Va. -- is being evaluated by the ship's crew and technical consultants, according to the Times.

Initial indications are that fine metal debris that collected in the lube oil filter caused the system to shut down, but the cause is not known, the Times reported. "Reporting of a complete loss of propulsion on USS Milwaukee (LCS 5) is deeply alarming, particularly given this ship was commissioned just 20 days ago," Sen. John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee who has voiced serious reservations about the LCS program in the past, said in a statement to the Times. "U.S. Navy ships are built with redundant systems to enable continued operation in the event of an engineering casualty, which makes this incident very concerning." At the time of its commissioning critics said the $437 million ship still hadn't met expectations. They said the Milwaukee and several other new 380-foot ships haven't lived up to promises in some key areas, such as the ability to quickly swap out combat modules for missions that include searching for underwater mines and engaging in battle with other ships.

They pointed to interchangeable modules on the vessels that are supposed to make the ships more versatile, with each version tailored for a specific purpose such as minesweeping or hunting submarines. The original goal was to be able to change the modules in 72 hours. But in practice, the "plug and play" concept isn't working, said Dakota Wood, senior research fellow for defense programs at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. Marinette Marine employs about 2,000 people building the ships designed for a variety of missions including combat in shallow, coastal waters. Defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp., through Marinette, has delivered three of the ships to the Navy: USS Freedom, USS Fort Worth and the USS Milwaukee. Six more of the warships are in various stages of construction in Marinette, while a different version is being built in Mobile, Ala. Altogether, the U.S. Navy wants 52 of the vessels, and foreign navies have shown interest in purchasing them as well."

"Ship to Shore Connecter (SSC) is the next generation of heavy-lift hovercraft – or Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC) for the US navy. It is currently under development powered by the compact, power-dense, Rolls-Royce MT7 marine gas turbine engine. Since the mid-1980s the US Navy and Marine Corps have operated a fleet of LCACs - giving commanders the ability to deliver a 60 ton payload (vehicles, stores and/or personnel) from ship to shore at speeds in excess of 40 knots. Currently operating a fleet of 72 hovercraft, the US Navy can access more than 70 per cent of the world’s coastline compared to just 15 per cent by conventional displacement landing craft often helping to deliver humanitarian aid/disaster relief where it is needed most. But, harsh operating conditions over the decades and out dated operating systems have meant it was time to look towards developing the new Ship to Shore Connector (SSC).

According to Captain Chris Mercer, the navy’s amphibious warfare programme manager, there is plenty different about the SSC. “We increased the strength of the cargo deck. We gave it a 74-ton payload capacity. We introduced more powerful and more fuel efficient engines, and more efficient propellers. We are going to a two-crew cockpit. And we’re designing SSC to go 30 years without a SLEP (service life extension programme).” “For SSC, we have substantially simplified the machinery arrangement such that the four gas turbines will be dual-coupled into two gearboxes to drive twin lift fans and two six-bladed controllable pitch propellers,” he adds.

The power is delivered by the MT7 marine gas turbine developed by Rolls-Royce. Derived from the AE family of aero engines, and maintaining over 90 per cent commonality with the AE 1107C-Liberty turboshaft powering the US Marine Corps’ unique MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor, the 4-5MW rated MT7 will provide both propulsion and lift for the SSC. “The MT7 combines modern turbine materials and technology to provide a state-of-the-art power system suited to a range of naval applications such as main propulsion and power generation,” says Paul Jones, Program Manager, Rolls-Royce. “It leverages the robust performance and reliability of the Rolls-Royce AE engine family which has accumulated approaching 65 million operating hours. Compared to the legacy LCAC engines, the MT7 will deliver about a 25 per cent increase in power while at the same time burning 11 per cent less fuel.”“The company will deliver the first MT7 shipset later this year,” says Jones. “The SSC programme of record could potentially lead to the manufacture of over 300 MT7 engines.”

"The Rolls-Royce powered future USS Zumwalt DDG-1000 put to sea for the first time on Monday 7 December 2015. At 8.27 a.m local time she left the dock side at General Dynamics Bath Iron Works Shipyard in Maine, USA, and headed out into the Kinnebeck river. This advanced destroyer is lead ship in a class of three powered by Rolls-Royce technology. Zumwalt class destroyers provide multi-mission offensive and defensive capabilities and can operate independently or as part of carrier strike groups, surface action groups, amphibious ready groups, and underway replenishment groups. The future USS Zumwalt, and each subsequent ship in the series, will be powered by a pair of Rolls-Royce MT30 main gas turbine generator sets (MTGs) providing 35.4MW each and two MT5S auxiliary turbine generator sets (ATGs) 3.9MW each, combining to deliver 78MW of total ship power. Zumwalt’s electrical system is configured as an Integrated Power System (IPS), which allows for power generated by the turbine generator sets to be used for propulsion as well as the ship’s weapons, sensors and on-board systems.

In addition, Rolls-Royce Naval is also providing two fixed pitch propellers to this ship, cast and machined at Pascagoula in Mississippi US. Rolls-Royce Naval facilities in Canada have supplied the Multi-function Towed Array Handling System (MTAH) that deploys the anti-submarine warfare towed array sonar and torpedo defence system. Neil Pickard, Naval Program Director - Americas stated, “Today marks the culmination of the tremendous efforts undertaken by the Naval team. Due to the innovative technology involved with this being the first all-electric ship, we have had many significant challenges to overcome throughout this programme. I would like to thank everyone in Rolls-Royce who has been involved in DDG-1000.” Alex Greve, Project Engineer Naval said, “DDG-1000’s alpha trials will mobilise nearly 80MW of power on a single vessel. I am proud to be part of the team that will meet this challenge. Our gas turbine generator sets will provide the power density our customer needs to bring tomorrow’s military technology alive.”

Rob Rice, Service Engineer Naval said, “Having served in the US Navy on-board ships powered by Rolls-Royce equipment, I always had a great sense of pride standing on my ship’s deck, porting anywhere in the world! Now, as a Rolls-Royce team member providing an excellent product for our United States Navy and my Country, words will never describe the sense of achievement as I witness USS Zumwalt, light-off, set restricted manoeuvring, cast off lines, and set a course out to sea!”

U.S. Navy recently launched the latest in its line of guided missile destroyers.

Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Ingalls Shipbuilding division launched its latest Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, called the Ralph Johnson, on Dec. 16, and the company has released time-lapse footage of the process.

28 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers for the Navy to use in both offensive and defensive combat missions. The ships are armed with 56 Raytheon Tomahawk cruise missiles that can be used to hit targets on land or against anti-ship missiles.

Each ship costs around $1.8 billion and four more are currently under construction. The price tag for the entire weapons effort, including maintenance, is estimated to come in at around $95 billion.

The $1.1 trillion government spending bill signed into law last week by President Obama included about $1 billion for the destroyer program.

The Defense Department has given the U.S. Navy the green light to begin entertaining proposals for the service’s next ballistic missile submarine, an effort that could cost nearly $350 billion over its lifetime.

A Pentagon spokeswoman told Bloomberg on Tuesday that Frank Kendall, the agency’s top weapons buyer, told the Navy it could release a request for proposals for the development phase of 12 Ohio-class replacement subs.

The service wants to buy 12 boats to replace the current force of 14 Trident Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, which entered into service in the early 1980s. Navy officials have pegged the cost of the Ohio replacement program, also known as the SSBN(X), at around $139 billion dollars. The effort’s lifetime cost will come in at roughly $347 billion.

The Navy budgeted $1.4 billion for research and design in fiscal year 2016, and the development phase, which will last for years, has an estimated cost of $15 billion. The Congressional Budget Office says first submarine could cost $13 billion.

The service has put a premium on the shipbuilding effort, which officials argue is essential for maintaining the country’s nuclear triad and keep up with aggressive naval pushes by Russia and China.

On Tuesday, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson released his first strategic guidance document since taking the service’s top job and singled out the submarine modernization effort as a way the U.S. can maintain its maritime superiority.

“This is foundational to our survival as a nation,” he writes.

Capitol Hill lawmakers, some with major shipyards in their districts or home states, have heard the service’s pleas and responded in kind.

The fiscal 2015 defense policy bill authorized a special account for the SSBN(X) effort, dubbed the “National Sea-Based Deterrence Fund.” The thinking goes that the sub effort is so large and so expensive that it should be considered a “national” program and therefore funded from accounts throughout the Pentagon, rather than strictly from Navy coffers, thus avoiding painful budget cuts to other shipbuilding programs.

However, congressional appropriators have resisted the move, countering that a special account for the boats would set a bad precedent and that the “national” tag could easily be applied to other expensive weapon platforms, such as the Air Force’s $400 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and have left the account empty.

Kendall has also derided the deterrence fund as a gimmick that does nothing to alleviate the budget pressures the department has been under the last several years.

The first submarine is expected to be purchased in 2021, with an initial fund request coming in fiscal 2017.

Who will bid on the program is less mysterious, since General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls Industries are the country’s only submarine builders.

A US Navy (USN) guided-missile nuclear-powered submarine (SSGN) has completed repairs following a grounding in late 2015 and is expected to re-enter the water this week, officials told IHS Jane's on 5 January.

The Ohio-class SSGN USS Georgia (SSGN 729) has been in dry dock for repairs following an incident, on 25 November, involving a channel buoy as the boat returned to port at Kings Bay, Georgia.

The boat had been conducting local operations off the coast of Florida and was returning to base when it struck the buoy. Lieutenant Lily Hinz, a spokesperson for the USN's Submarine Group 10, told IHS Jane's that the incident caused a partial grounding near the entrance to the channel.

Crises in the world's most volatile regions could spell longer deployments and more uncertainty for fleet sailors.

The tense waters of Asia-Pacific or the Middle East could go for weeks or months without a U.S. aircraft carrier patrolling there this spring. But military planners are weighing whether this is the right moment to drop carrier presence, with strikes against Islamic State militants intensifying, rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and North Korea's hydrogen bomb test. The other options are to cut one carrier's needed maintenance short or extend a crew's deployment beyond the 7-month goal — both unsavory options for fleet bosses.

At issue is a weeks-long period between when the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group heads home from the Gulf in May and when the Dwight D. Eisenhower CSG deploys later that summer. That leaves the John C. Stennis CSG, which deploys in a few weeks, as the only flattop in either 5th or 7th Fleet.

Another option is abruptly canceling the carrier Ronald Reagan's overhaul. The flattop recently arrived in Japan and needs maintenance before preparing for its patrol this summer.

The Navy declined to comment specifically on the looming carrier gap — precise deployment dates are not releasable to the public — but Navy spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Tim Hawkins said that leadership was constantly reviewing deployments.

"It's important to keep in mind that military leaders continually review force requirements and adjust global force management plans accordingly,” Hawkins said. “Naval forces are inherently flexible, agile and will continue to be where it matters, when it matters.”

None of the options facing the fleet and combatant commanders are good, according to officials familiar with the internal deliberations.

f the Navy pulls the carrier from U.S. Central Command in favor of dispatching Stennis to U.S. Pacific Command, it will be the second time within a year that the fight with ISIS will lack a flattop. The ultimate decision will rest with Gen. Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Defense Secretary Ash Carter.

Fleet Forces Command was tasked in 2014 by the Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert to get deployments down to seven months from as long as 10 months, a goal the current CNO Adm. John Richardson has committed to. But in order to close the looming carrier gap, the Navy will either have to extend Truman’s seven-month deployment to eight months or more, or curtail Reagan’s maintenance period in Japan. Cutting carrier maintenance, especially after years of straining optempo, is a step fleet bosses have pushed to avoid.

All CSG and amphibious ready group deployments under the new deployment rotation plan are scheduled for seven months, according to Fleet Forces Command spokesman Cmdr. John Gay.More challenges

All of this comes at a time when the fleet is attempting to reset after years of hard use, including a two-year period between 2011 and 2013 when the Navy was required to keep two CSGs in 5th Fleet. The Optimized Fleet Response Plan was designed to give the Navy the time and space to fix its ships and give sailors, who have borne the brunt of the deployment uncertainty, time to recover.

Work stoppages in the Navy-run public shipyards due to automatic spending cuts called sequestration also created maintenance delays, further reducing the readiness of the fleet.

Extending deployments and returning to uncertainty would take a toll on sailors and their families, said one former FFC leader.

“How much will the sailors and their families sustain in an all-volunteer force before you start harming retention,” said retired Adm. John Harvey, who commanded FFC until 2012. “You do a back-to back deployment like [carrier Eisenhower] did in 2012/2013, you pay for that.”

Harvey said the issues the Navy is facing are the result of the meeting combatant commander requirements beyond its capacity, including the stretch from 2011 to 2013 when the Navy was required to have two carriers in the gulf and one in the Pacific at all times.

“There is no easy way to take a 10-carrier force and operate it like you have 16,” Harvey said. “At some point the wheels will come off the cart.”

And the fleet will continue to be a 10-carrier force for most of the decade. The fleet has been at 10 carriers since the carrier Enterprise was decommissioned in 2013 and stayed at that figure because of delays in the deployment date of carrier Gerald R. Ford, said Bryan Clark, a retired submarine officer and analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

“It was supposed to be a 14-month gap at 10 carriers and now the gap will be almost 8 years with shock testing being added to the Ford’s pre-deployment preparations,” Clark said. In August, the Pentagon ordered the Navy to run shock trials on Ford before she deploys, further delaying the Navy’s newest ship.

Still, Clark argues that the COCOMs should just make do with the reduced presence so as not to endanger the Navy's future ability to generate force.

“There will likely be more security challenges going forward, rather than less, as China continues to pursue its ambitions, North Korea strives to get attention, Russia looks to shift attention from its domestic problems, and ISIS tries to regain the initiative,” Clark said.

“The U.S. should take this time, although it may mean less carrier presence now, to get the fleet back in good shape to prepare for a decade in which the U.S. will need to reassert its role as an enforcer of global norms.”

For many observers, the carrier gaps are the result of delays created primarily by ill-considered cuts to the Navy’s budget and force structure.

“We are reaping the consequences of our actions,” said Bryan McGrath, a retired destroyer skipper and influential consultant with the FerryBridge Group. “We cut too deeply in the face of mounting requirements and we’re either going to have to figure this out on our own, or we are going to be forced into figuring it out by a calamity.”

The Excalibur N5 is a 5-inch variant of Raytheon's Excalibur extended range precision projectile. The projectile is currently in use by the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps, in addition to other armed forces. The company expects the N5 variant will triple the effective range of naval gun munitions currently in use, while maintaining the same accuracy.

The new sea-based projectile is designed to be used for naval surface fire support, anti-surface warfare, and engaging fast attack craft.

The Excalibur is a co-developed project between Raytheon and BAE Systems. Future plans for the program also include the Excalibur S, which incorporates a digital semi-active laser seeker to further improve accuracy and reduce the risk of GPS jamming.

What about Russia Navy what do they use with theirr naval guns is it at par with Excalibur ?

An active seeker that allows Tomahawk Block IV cruise missiles to hit moving targets on land and sea has been tested by Raytheon.

The captive flight tests over a three-week period involved a modified Tomahawk missile nose cone mounted on a T-39 test aircraft and equipped with a seeker integrated with Raytheon's new, modular, multi-mode processor, the company said.

"Tomahawk is evolving to meet the U.S. Navy's need to add offensive punch and expand the overall power of the fleet worldwide," said Mike Jarrett, Raytheon Air Warfare Systems vice president. "The seeker test has successfully demonstrated the superior capability and maturity of our seeker technology against a variety of targets that resemble today's threats."

Raytheon said the tests were company funded.

The surface and submarine-launched Tomahawk Block IV has a range of about 1,000 miles and is designed for long-range precision strike missions. Tomahawk missiles are integrated aboard all major U.S. surface combatants, as well as U.S. and U.K. sub-surface platforms.

Tomahawk Missiles Will Get Twice As Deadly By Blowing Up Their Own Fuel

A new project could supercharge cruise missiles with several times more bang, and all without changing the warhead.

The Tomahawk cruise missile, launched from subs, ships, or aircraft, is the tip of the spear against opponents with air defenses. More than a hundred were fired in the opening round against Libya in 2011. While the basic design has been around for decades—they were used as far back as the 1991 Gulf War—the Tomahawk has seen numerous upgrades over the years. This new tweak could improve the Tomahawk's striking power through the power of what you might call extreme mixology. It's all about fuel-air explosions.

Ordinary high explosives such as TNT do not require any oxygen. The big molecule simply breaks apart, releasing energy. By contrast, a fuel-air explosion is a form of combustion in which the fuel combines with oxygen in the air and burns more rapidly. As any gearhead will tell you, the fuel-air mixture is all-important for efficient combustion.Vaporized

Eleven years ago, I experienced a first-hand demonstration of the fuel-air effect. My wife and I were woken at 6:02 am one Sunday morning by the rattling of the roof tiles, as though something immense had just landed on the house. Along with thousands of other Londoners, we did not discover the cause until it came on the news later that morning. There had been a fire and explosion at an oil storage terminal at Buncefield, more than 20 miles away. The shock that woke us had registered 2.4 on the Richter Scale and was heard as far away as Belgium. Amazingly nobody was killed, though several were injured.

Fuel air explosions are not uncommon, but the one at Buncefield was exceptionally powerful, far more powerful than experts would have been predicted. That's because the fuel vapors had somehow been mixed with the air.

The Buncefield incident puzzled the investigators because the cloud from the 60,000 gallons of oil should not have caused such a strong blast. Normally, vapor will burn rather than explode, giving that characteristic "whoomph" sound, but Buncefield showed all the signs of a huge pressure wave. Cars, including a new Porsche, had been flattened. It turns out, the investigators found, that the key factor was a row of trees by the storage tanks. Burning vapor produces an exhaust like a jet engine, and when the flame front reached the trees, it accelerated to high speed. The irregular branches and twigs made the smooth flow turbulent, mixing the vapor cloud with air so it burned far more rapidly and with much greater force.

The same science that woke me up in 2005 is now being harnessed to make the Tomahawk more deadly. In this case, weapons designers are turning unused fuel into a second warhead via controlled mixing with air.

Missiles usually have fuel left over when they reach the target. Some missiles have a fuze to ignite this fuel after impact; in other cases, it may burn anyway. For example, when an Exocet missile hit the British destroyer HMS Sheffield during the 1982 Falklands War, the explosive warhead did not go off , but burning rocket propellant started fires that destroyed the ship anyway. And, of course, we cannot forget the importance of burning fuel in the 9/11 attacks.

The Tomahawk cruise missile is unusual in that it uses turbine powered by a liquid fuel known as JP-10. Normal aviation fuel, JP-5 or Jet-A kerosene, produces about 125,000 BTUs per gallon, 10 percent more than gasoline. JP-10, otherwise called exo-tetrahydrodicyclopentadiene, pushes this number up by another 10 percent. It's the best around, but costs around $25 a gallon.

The Tomahawk Block III is loaded with more than a thousand pounds of JP-10 on launch, giving it a range of more than 800 miles. So, if the target is only 400 miles away, the missile may have some five hundred pounds of fuel left on impact. That leftover could make quite a bang. A rough calculation suggests the total energy content of that much jet fuel is several times greater than the Tomahawk's explosive warhead (approximately a thousand pounds of PBXN-107 plastic-bonded explosive). However, creating such an explosion would mean turning all the fuel into a vapor cloud and detonating it efficiently. And therein lies the trick.

Fuel-Air Fireball

Fuel-air explosives are already used as weapons. The Russians, in particular, have a range of "thermobaric" fuel-air weapons that make ferocious blasts, including the tank-mounted TOS-1 rocket launcher that could destroy eight city blocks with one salvo. U.S. thermobaric weapons are generally based on powdered solid fuel in powdered form, as liquid explosions are a different challenge.

Enter Blaine Asay, formerly of Los Alamos National Laboratory, and his colleagues at Energetic Materials Research and Engineering based in Atchison, Kansas. Under a contract with the U.S. Air Force, Asay, expert in the field of non-shock initiation of explosions, is developing a system that will implode a missile's fuel tank to generate a cloud of vapor and ignite it in a rapidly burning fireball.

This is quite a challenge, as the fuel-air mixture has to be just right. The precise engineering cannot be done by trial and error, but requires computer modeling with a package called ALE3D (Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian 3D and 2D Multi-Physics Code)—software that allows the simulation of complex high-speed reactions in three-dimensional space.

Asay says he's not at liberty to discuss all the details, but published results show the team succeeded in creating a cloud of JP-10 that burned in 30 milliseconds. In the next phase, the researchers will use their previous results to improve the burning speed by a factor of 100, aiming to hit the jackpot: a detonation in which virtually all the fuel is burned.

If their research succeeds, then a simple, cheap add-on could make existing cruise missiles far more powerful. The same technology would also enable a new generation of small, liquid-fueled missiles or jet-powered attack drones with a powerful punch. Some of these might not even have warheads in the usual sense, but rather, would simply carry a dual-use fuel tank so that striking power can be traded off against greatly extended range. Otherwise-unarmed scout drones fitted with a fuel-air device could be used as missiles if they encountered a high-value target. As the understanding of fuel-air mixing grows and our ability to model it gets better, such devices will get increasingly powerful

A hovering missile decoy system from BAE Systems Australia has been tested for the first time from an aircraft carrier.

The Nulka active missile decoy by BAE Systems Australia has been successfully fired from a U.S. aircraft carrier for the first time, the company reports.

Five successful launches took place over three days last month from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower during sea trials in the Atlantic Ocean from a U.S. Navy CVN Class aircraft carrier for the first time.

"While Nulka has been used by smaller U.S. naval vessels for years, it had never been fired from a ship as large as an aircraft carrier before," BAE Systems said.

The Nulka is a rocket-propelled, disposable decoy. It hovers in midair and lures away incoming missiles from their intended targets by radiating a ship-like radar cross section. The decoy was jointly developed by Australia and the United States. Australia developed the hovering rocket while the U.S. developed the electronic payload.

More than 150 U.S., Australian and Canadian warships carry the system, but none as large as a carrier.

A Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) that has been operating in the Asia-Pacific region for over a year is currently pierside in Singapore after experiencing an engine casualty while undergoing maintenance in port, US Navy (USN) officials told IHS Jane's on 21 January.

A combining gears malfunction occurred on board USS Fort Worth (LCS 3) during an operational test of the port and starboard main propulsion diesel engines, according to Task Force 73, which is charged with overseeing logistics for USN ships in the Western Pacific.

The Admiral In Charge of Navy Intelligence Has Not Been Allowed to See Military Secrets For Years

For more than two years, the Navy’s intelligence chief has been stuck with a major handicap: He’s not allowed to know any secrets.

Vice Adm. Ted “Twig” Branch has been barred from reading, seeing or hearing classified information since November 2013, when the Navy learned from the Justice Department that his name had surfaced in a giant corruption investigation involving a foreign defense contractor and scores of Navy personnel.

Worried that Branch was on the verge of being indicted, Navy leaders suspended his access to classified materials. They did the same to one of his deputies, Rear Adm. Bruce F. Loveless, the Navy’s director of intelligence operations.

More than 800 days later, neither Branch nor Loveless has been charged. But neither has been cleared, either. Their access to classified information remains blocked.

Although the Navy transferred Loveless to a slightly less sensitive post, it kept Branch in charge of its intelligence division. That has resulted in an awkward arrangement, akin to sending a warship into battle with its skipper stuck onshore.

[Epic Navy bribery scandal shows how easy it can be to steal military secrets]

Branch can’t meet with other senior U.S. intelligence leaders to discuss sensitive operations, or hear updates from his staff about secret missions or projects. It can be a chore just to set foot in colleagues’ offices; in keeping with regulations, they must conduct a sweep beforehand to make sure any classified documents are locked up.

Some critics have questioned how smart it is for the Navy to retain an intelligence chief with such limitations, for so long, especially at a time when the Pentagon is confronted by crises in the Middle East, the South China Sea, the Korean Peninsula and other hotspots.

“I have never heard of anything as asinine, bizarre or stupid in all my years,” Norman Polmar, a naval analyst and historian, said in an interview. (end of excerpt)

The Director of Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E), the Pentagon's independent test office, is standing behind its critical test report on the Littoral Combat Ship after the US Navy called the assessment "unfair."

The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), designed for close-shore combat, was unable to effectively defend itself against smaller attack boats, according to a recent report by the DOT&E. The tests pitted the LCS USS Coronado against attack boats, which infiltrated the ship's "keep-out" zone, the report stated. The Coronado ultimately destroyed the attackers, but the simulation showed that the ship would have suffered heavy damage.

A US Navy official, speaking to Breaking Defense on condition of anonymity, called the DOT&E findings "unfair," pointing out that the LCS was not equipped with its missile package.

In a letter, the DOT&E responded that the unnamed Navy official "was apparently not familiar with the basis for the test and many of his statements are incorrect or not related to what was being tested."

The Navy "established a much lower performance threshold" for the missile-less LCS in a classified 2013 memo from the then-Vice-Chief of Naval Operations, DOT&E said. "It also defined what the Navy considered to be a successful engagement, specifically requiring each target to be neutralized before any of them closed to within the Navy prescribed minimum stand-off range – a range selected based on the distance at which threat weapons would have a good chance of hitting the LCS. In reality, there are several threat weapons that could hit LCS from an even greater distance …."

Even judging by these lower standards, however, LCS allowed the enemy boats too close, DOT&E said. "Though the ship was able to eventually repel the simulated attack, this was after the targets had successfully penetrated the Navy's prescribed stand-off range," the letter stated. "In a real battle, there would be a good chance LCS might have sustained damage at that point that could have affected its subsequent capability to successfully repel the attack."

The LCS will be tested again when the Longbow Hellfire surface-to-surface missiles are added in 2017, although it will be tested "more robustly," the DOT&E wrote.

The Pentagon’s budget submission will contain a request for $2 billion spread over the next five years to purchase 4,000 Tomahawk weapons while funding the development of more advanced capabilities.

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter revealed the Tomahawk buy during a Tuesday visit to Naval Air Station, China Lake, California, while also noting that the budget will commit almost $1.5 billion to development of two other advanced weapons.

Then on Wednesday, the Secretary announced the budget will also include $2.9 billion over the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP) for the SM-6 interceptor, both to purchase 650 of the weapons and to advance them to become an anti-ship missile for the first time.

Developed by Raytheon, the Tomahawk is a mainstay for ship-based weaponry, but has been restricted to striking at fixed targets. However, company executives revealed last January that Raytheon has invested in a multi-modal seeker that would allow the missiles to hit moving targets.

“We want to diversify the kinds of targets that they can hit, from land attack, which is probably how you first met the Tomahawk many years ago, to an anti-ship version so that we continue to diversify our suite of anti-ship missiles,” Carter said Tuesday. “Again, in the spirit of making everything we have lethal.”

The company estimated last year that that adding a moving target capability would cost about $250,000 for each missile, which already cost $1.1 million each.

While not explicitly mentioning the new Tomahawk sensors, Carter did note that the department is using this fiscal year 2017 budget request to ensure “we’re making investments in weapons and sensors and capabilities.”

Carter previously revealed that the Pentagon will request $1.8 billion in 2017 to buy more than 45,000 precision-guided munitions, which are being expanded at fast rates dues to the ongoing fight against the Islamic State group, commonly known as ISIS or ISIL.

Added to that is “about $927 million over the FYDP” for the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile, or LRASM, and another $418 million over the FYDP for the Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile – Extended Range (AARGM-ER) weapon, Carter said.

The secretary indicated that improving lethality to munitions is something of a theme for the budget, adding that the investments represent “big, big, big money for munitions, very important.”

That theme continued with the SM-6 news, giving another Raytheon product a major boost in the budget.

A Pentagon official told Defense News that the department has successfully modified the SM-6 to be an anti-ship missile, rather than just a ballistic missile defense weapon.Now you see Garry was right those aegis ashore sites in Poland and Romania with SM-3 interceptors can be replaced with SM-6 interceptors also which gained anti-ship missile capability thus it can act as a cruise missile to launch on Russian soil.

‎‎"This new anti-ship mode makes the SM-6 highly lethal due to its speed and agility and nearly overnight doubles the purpose of every such missile used across our fleet of Aegis destroyers," the official said. "This is an example of what the secretary sees as thinking differently and how through innovation we will continue to improve the unparalleled capabilities of the US Navy."The SM-6 provides an over-the-horizon engagement capability when launched from an Aegis warship and uses the latest in hardware and software missile technology to provide needed capabilities against evolving air threats.

Flight test Alpha was the longest downrange, and flight test Bravo was the longest cross-range intercepts with an SM-6 to date. Along with flight tests Alpha and Bravo, flight test Delta successfully intercepted two targets with simultaneous engagements, and flight test Golf successfully intercepted a target with electronic counter-measures

According to media reports, Carter also pledged that the budget will request funding for nine Virginia-class attack submarines and 10 Aegis destroyers over the next five years. It will also include money to purchase 10 F-35C models for the Navy and 3 F-35B models for the Marines over what had been planned. This occurs as the Air Force is looking to draw down its planned FY17 buy of the F-35A model by five planes, sources told Defense News.

And in good news for Boeing, Carter said the budget plan also calls for 16 F/A-18 Super Hornets over the FYDP. Boeing has been desperate to keep production flowing on the Super Hornet, produced in its St. Louis facilities.

"The U.S. Navy's FY17 budget request is set to transform the Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) system into the Carrier-Based Aerial-Refueling System (CBARS). The reason for the move is mainly to adress a shortfall in carrier based fighters and to free F/A-18E/F Super Hornets from their aerial refueling missions so they may focus on strike and air to air missions.

The new CBARS program will create an UAV for aerial refueling duties to extend the range of manned fighters. The United States Navy's Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) program was to develop an autonomous aircraft carrier-based unmanned combat aerial vehicle to provide an unmanned intelligence and strike asset to the fleet.

UCLASS was succeeding to the Unmanned Combat Air System-Demonstration (UCAS-D) program which produced the Northrop Grumman X-47B demonstrator aircraft. The X-47B performed launches and recoveries from US Navy aicraft carriers at sea in 2013 and 2014. Northrop Grumman demonstrated last year that X-47B could be refuelled in the air. According to early rumors, CBARS could retain some of the ISR mission sets originally planned for UCLASS, but for sure will lose its combat and strike abilities."

"As the division of the US military most responsible high-tech developments, DARPA has announced that April will the launch of a futuristic ship that is designed to detect and fight submarines at sea. But the thing is, the ship doesn't even have a crew; it's completely autonomous. That means it's basically a robotic, submarine-hunting drone yacht. Unfortunately, because it's the military, they have to give it an acronym for its long, ridiculous name, instead of just calling it an "autonomous submarine hunter."

The ship's official name is "Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel," which get shortened down to "ASW Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel" before finally getting the acronym "ACTUV" (simply pronounced as "active"). Measuring 132-feet long and weighing 140 tons, ACTUV will be christened on April 7th in Portland, Oregon this year. While the vessel and its software surely cost a lot of money to develop, DARPA says the fact that it's autonomous will result in huge savings on daily operation.

ACTUV's main purpose will be to detect and locate diesel electric submarines that are trying to remain stealthy. In order to send it on its way, the Navy will release sonar buoys to point the ship in the right direction, afterwards its short- and long-range sonar will take over.After the April unveiling, DARPA says ACTUV will go through 18 months of testing and demonstrating its capabilities. Aside from hunting submarines, the agency envisions the ship being used for supply delivery to other vessels, reconnaissance, and to counter undersea mines."

Militarov wrote:"As the division of the US military most responsible high-tech developments, DARPA has announced that April will the launch of a futuristic ship that is designed to detect and fight submarines at sea. But the thing is, the ship doesn't even have a crew; it's completely autonomous. That means it's basically a robotic, submarine-hunting drone yacht. Unfortunately, because it's the military, they have to give it an acronym for its long, ridiculous name, instead of just calling it an "autonomous submarine hunter."

The ship's official name is "Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel," which get shortened down to "ASW Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel" before finally getting the acronym "ACTUV" (simply pronounced as "active"). Measuring 132-feet long and weighing 140 tons, ACTUV will be christened on April 7th in Portland, Oregon this year. While the vessel and its software surely cost a lot of money to develop, DARPA says the fact that it's autonomous will result in huge savings on daily operation.

ACTUV's main purpose will be to detect and locate diesel electric submarines that are trying to remain stealthy. In order to send it on its way, the Navy will release sonar buoys to point the ship in the right direction, afterwards its short- and long-range sonar will take over.After the April unveiling, DARPA says ACTUV will go through 18 months of testing and demonstrating its capabilities. Aside from hunting submarines, the agency envisions the ship being used for supply delivery to other vessels, reconnaissance, and to counter undersea mines."